70

　　• Silo 18 •

　　The pot on the stove bubbled noisily, steam rising off the surface, tiny drops of water leaping to theirfreedom over the edge. Lukas shook a pinch of tea leaves out of the resealable tin and into the tinystrainer. His hands were shaking as he lowered the little basket into his mug. As he lifted the pot,some water spilled directly on the burner; the drops made spitting sounds and gave off a burned odor.

　　He watched Bernard out of the corner of his eye as he tilted¹ the boiling water through the leaves.

　　“I just don’t understand,” he said, holding the mug with both hands, allowing the heat to penetratehis palms. “How could anybody—? How could you do something like this on purpose?” He shookhis head and peered into his mug, where a few intrepid² shreds³ of leaf had already gotten free andswam outside the basket. He looked up at Bernard. “And you knew about this? How—? How couldyou know about this?”

　　Bernard frowned. He rubbed his mustache with one hand, the other resting in the belly⁴ of hisoveralls. “I wish I didn’t know it,” he told Lukas. “And now you see why some facts, some pieces ofknowledge, have to be snuffed out as soon as they form. Curiosity would blow across such embersand burn this silo to the ground.” He looked down at his boots. “I pieced it together much as you did,just knowing what we have to know to do this job. This is why I chose you, Lukas. You and a fewothers have some idea what’s stored on these servers. You’re already prepped for learning more. Canyou imagine if you told any of this to someone who wears red or green to work every day?”

　　Lukas shook his head.

　　“It’s happened before, you know. Silo ten went down like that. I sat back there”—he pointedtoward the small study with the books, the computer, the hissing⁷ radio—“and I listened to it happen. Ilistened to a colleague’s shadow broadcast his insanity⁸ to anyone who would listen.”

　　Lukas studied his steeping tea. A handful of leaves swam about on hot currents of darkeningwater; the rest remained in the grip of the imprisoning⁹ basket. “That’s why the radio controls arelocked up,” he said.

　　“And it’s why you are locked up.”

　　Lukas nodded. He’d already suspected as much.

　　“How long were you kept in here?” He glanced up at Bernard, and an image flashed in his mind,one of Sheriff Billings inspecting his gun while his mother had visited him. Had they been listeningin? Would he have been shot, his mother too, if he’d said anything?

　　“I spent just over two months down here until my caster knew I was ready, that I had accepted andunderstood everything I’d learned.” He crossed his arms over his belly. “I really wish you hadn’tasked the question, hadn’t put it together so soon. It’s much better to find out when you’re older.”

　　Lukas pursed his lips and nodded. It was strange to talk like this with someone his senior,someone who knew so much more, was so much wiser. He imagined this was the sort of conversationa man had with his father—only not about the planned and carried-out destruction of the entire world.

　　Lukas bent¹⁰ his head and breathed in the smell of the steeping leaves. The mint was like a directline through the trembling stress, a strike to the calm pleasure center in the deep regions of his brain.

　　He inhaled¹¹ and held his breath, finally let it out. Bernard crossed to the small stove in the corner ofthe storeroom and started making his own mug.

　　“How did they do it?” Lukas asked. “To kill so many. Do you know how they did it?”

　　Bernard shrugged¹². He tapped the tin with one finger, shaking out a precise amount of tea intoanother basket. “They might still be doing it for all I know. Nobody talks about how long it’ssupposed to go on. There’s fear that small pockets of survivors¹³ might be holed up elsewhere aroundthe globe. Operation Fifty is completely pointless if anyone else survives. The population has to behomogenous—”

　　“The man I spoke¹⁴ to, he said we were it. Just the fifty silos—”

　　“Forty-seven,” Bernard said. “And we are it, as far as we know. It’s difficult to imagine anyoneelse being so well prepared. But there’s always a chance. It’s only been a few hundred years.”

　　“A few hundred?” Lukas leaned back against the counter. He lifted his tea, but the mint waslosing its power to reach him. “So hundreds of years ago, we decided¹⁵—”

　　“They.” Bernard filled his mug with the still- steaming water. “They decided. Don’t includeyourself. Certainly don’t include me.”

　　“Okay, they decided to destroy the world. Wipe everything out. Why?”

　　Bernard set his mug down on the stove to let it steep. He pulled off his glasses, wiped the steamoff them, then pointed⁶ them toward the study, toward the wall with the massive shelves of books.

　　“Because of the worst parts of our Legacy¹⁶, that’s why. At least, that’s what I think they would say ifthey were still alive.” He lowered his voice and muttered, “Which they aren’t, thank God.”

　　Lukas shuddered¹⁷. He still didn’t believe anyone would make that decision, no matter what theconditions were like. He thought of the billions of people who supposedly lived beneath the stars allthose hundreds of years ago. Nobody could kill so many. How could anyone take that much life forgranted?

　　“And now we work for them,” Lukas spat¹⁸. He crossed to the sink and pulled the basket out of hismug, set it on the stainless¹⁹ steel to drain. He took a cautious sip²⁰, slurping²¹ lest it burn him. “You tellme not to include us, but we’re a part of this now.”

　　“No.” Bernard walked away from the stove and stood in front of the small map of the worldhanging above the dinette. “We weren’t any part of what those crazy fucks did. If I had those guys,the men who did this, if I had them in a room with me, I’d kill every last goddamned one of them.”

　　Bernard smacked²² the map with his palm. “I’d kill them with my bare hands.”

　　Lukas didn’t say anything. He didn’t move.

　　“They didn’t give us a chance. That’s not what this is.” He gestured at the room around him.

　　“These are prisons. Cages, not homes. Not meant to protect us, but meant to force us, by pain ofdeath, to bring about their vision.”

　　“Their vision for what?”

　　“For a world where we’re too much the same, where we’re too tightly invested in each other towaste our time fighting, to waste our resources guarding those same limited resources.” He lifted hismug and took a noisy sip. “That’s my theory, at least. From decades of reading. The people who didthis, they were in charge of a powerful country that was beginning to crumble²³. They could see theend, their end, and it scared them suicidal. As the time began to run out—over decades, keep in mind—they figured they had one chance to preserve themselves, to preserve what they saw as their way oflife. And so, before they lost the only opportunity they might ever have, they put a plan into motion.”

　　“Without anybody knowing? How?”

　　Bernard took another sip. He smacked his lips and wiped his mustache. “Who knows? Maybenobody could believe it anyway. Maybe the reward for secrecy²⁴ was inclusion. They built other thingsin factories bigger than you can imagine that nobody knew about. They built bombs in factories likethese that I suspect played a part in all this. All without anyone knowing. And there are stories in theLegacy about men from a long time ago in a land with great kings, like mayors but with many morepeople to rule. When these men died, elaborate chambers²⁵ were built below the earth and filled withtreasure. It required the work of hundreds of men. Do you know how they kept the locations of thesechambers a secret?”

　　Lukas lifted his shoulders. “They paid the workers a ton of chits?”

　　Bernard laughed. He pinched a stray tea leaf off his tongue. “They didn’t have chits. And no, theymade perfectly²⁶ sure these men would keep quiet. They killed them.”

　　“Their own men?” Lukas glanced toward the room with the books, wondering which tin this storywas in.

　　“It is not beyond us to kill to keep secrets.” Bernard’s face hardened as he said this. “It’ll be a partof your job one day, when you take over.”

　　Lukas felt a sharp pain in his gut²⁷ as the truth of this hit. He caught the first glimmer²⁸ of what he’dtruly signed on for. It made shooting people with rifles seem an honest affair.

　　“We are not the people who made this world, Lukas, but it’s up to us to survive it. You need tounderstand that.”

　　“We can’t control where we are right now,” he mumbled²⁹, “just what we do going forward.”

　　“Wise words.” Bernard took another sip of tea.

　　“Yeah. I’m just beginning to appreciate them.”

　　Bernard set his cup in the sink and tucked a hand in the round belly of his overalls⁵. He stared atLukas a moment, then looked again to the small map of the world.

　　“Evil men did this, but they’re gone. Forget them. Just know this: they locked up their brood as afucked-up form of their own survival. They put us in this game, a game where breaking the rulesmeans we all die, every single one of us. But living by those rules, obeying them, means we allsuffer.”

　　He adjusted his glasses and walked over to Lukas, patted him on the shoulder as he went past.

　　“I’m proud of you, son. You’re absorbing this much better than I ever did. Now get some rest. Makesome room in your head and heart. Tomorrow, more studies.” He headed toward the study, thecorridor, the distant ladder.

　　Lukas nodded and remained silent. He waited until Bernard was gone, the muted clang of distantmetal telling him that the grate was back in place, before walking through to the study to gaze up atthe big schematic, the one with the silos crossed out. He peered at the roof of silo one, wondering justwho in hell was in charge of all this and whether they too could rationalize their actions as havingbeen foisted³⁰ upon them, imagine themselves as not really being culpable³¹ but just going along withsomething they’d inherited, a crooked³² game with ratshit rules and almost everyone kept ignorant andlocked up.

　　Who the fuck were these people? Could he see himself being one of them?

　　How did Bernard not see that he was one of them?

 

点击收听单词发音